Resident Evil 4 Optimal Controller Aim Settings Guide

Just thought i would share my settings and feel free to share yours too, these make combat consistently fun and responsive with my Xbox series controller. I found these settings helped me to quickly respond to enemies left and right without undershooting or overshooting, it essentially removes acceleration and very mildly slows the reticle when going over an enemy so as not to overshoot.

Right now, PlayStation reportedly has much better tuned acceleration and dead-zone values that haven’t translated to Xbox consoles or PC with controller, so these issues listed may become less egregious post patch. Some older REengine entries to the series, especially 7&8, still have issues with aim acceleration so i would attempt these recommended settings even after a ‘fix’.

The good thing about this guide is that its settings should not be negatively affected post patch due to completely disabling aim acceleration you should just get more granular control if and when they fix the deadzone issues. I’ll update if necessary.

The most important setting by far is removing the aim acceleration by maxing their two sliders, the turn speed can be dialled in and deceleration is recommended but still mainly optional. Every RE game since 7 has had less than ideal acceleration performance or issues stemming from it when using controller.

Maximum Camera Speed (Controller)

• Normal Gameplay = 6
• When Aiming = 1.4

Try out various Maximum Camera Speed settings yourself and i’ll also come back and update the more i dial in but remember that with deceleration on, the cursor will not be as twitchy in actual combat, however the shooting gallery does not apply reticle deceleration on the targets in there.

Camera Acceleration (MOST IMPORTANT SETTING)

• Both ‘Normal’ & ‘When Aiming’ = 10 (MAX)

By Maxing out the acceleration values you essentially disable it as the cursor goes to its max speed immediately, the max speed like that shown above 6 & 1.4.
Setting the value of acceleration from 10 to 0 in this game doesn’t disable it (unlike in RE7&8) but instead makes it take the longest time to reach max speed.

Reticle Deceleration = 2

This will slow your aim a small amount when passing over enemies, it’s subtle enough that you won’t get too stuck on someone in a group if you’re panning over but unless you have great stick discipline and can find a way to shrink the games deadzones using steam input settings (or hope capcom patches the game) i would highly recommend some small value here.

Here are a couple of other tweaks i did in Options –> Controls and why.

• Control Type = A-2
  This brings the layout closer to RE7/8 by making R3 crouch rather than the B button and makes it so you can dodge certain attacks while still having control of the camera.
• Run Type = Hold
  Wait, don’t skip this just yet! Clicking in the left stick will still toggle run, this option dictates the right bumper, having one run button be hold that you use in combat makes sure the game doesn’t keep you running when you actually wanna stop and make a small movement.
• Repeated Input Type = Hold
  My old bones want a break from button mashing :p

Why not acceleration?
Simply put with the option on the game seems to keep the acceleration when moving from one direction to the next, which would seem to make sense theoretically but in practice you often aim in one direction to hit a target, find you’ve overshot a little and go to quickly make a mild correction, but the acceleration is still applying even with a mild tilt back on the stick so this often results in an over correction. If you thought that was bad RE7/8 wouldn’t acknowledge the mild correction back in the other direction with acceleration on but instead stop the cursor dead in it’s tracks, how did that get through QA.Flipping the script and having the game decelerate your aim when moving over an enemy brings it closer in line to games like Crysis remastered or Halo/Destiny. You want to quickly find your target but then be slowed to make more precise shots, this wouldn’t be so much of an issue with tightly tuned dead zones but even so a thumb on a stick has its limitations compared to a mouse and wrist.Why not just turn on Aim Assist then?
Testing it out, while it does help to snap on targets most of the time that’s not always reliable or very smooth feeling, it tends to stick too much before allowing finer aiming, with snap & follow it tends to momentarily move the cursor to match the enemies movement before then losing lock, i found both options ended up throwing me off consistently while trying to land head/legs shots. Snap may work well for people but I think the reticle deceleration method works best and is more consistent, at least in my testing.Dead-zone demons
Digital Foundry released a video a few hours ago as of this edit, commenting on how the dead-zone and acceleration curve on Xbox and subsequently PC is still broken on launch like they reported in their chainsaw demo video, this could however mean that in a future patch this guide becomes a lot less relevant if the default controls are ‘fixed’ but seeing as how i played through all RE engine entries in preparation for RE4 remake, the acceleration issues especially in RE7/8 still make me think this guide outside of the dead-zone issue will still remain helpful.

I have also tried various community templates via big picture mode and some, despite saying dead-zone fix, were not uploaded properly so do not adjust dead-zone at all, another seemed to make my aim behave weird in a way that’s difficult to explain, no amount of aim acceleration in-game applied to it as if the game didn’t recognise it as a controller anymore. This could be the game and how it handles steam input i dunno but for now i am sticking with the settings i posted above until an official dead-zone fix.

With the more nimble and aggressive enemies in this game the less than steller controls that didn’t seem troublesome on RE2/3 become more apparent, atleast to me. it just made more sense reversing the curve, rather than accelerate the cursor to catch the enemy in your sights, giving you max speed immediately if you hard press the stick to a direction and helping apply the brakes when on target seemed more intuitive. Kudos to Capcom outside of the issues spoken of for at least having the foresight to give more tweak-able options than RE2/3 in regards to acceleration. Hopefully i can stop saying acceleration so much now, enjoy!